A number of devices and fasteners are currently available for fastening panels, such as body panels and automobile interior and exterior trimpieces, to the chassis of a vehicle. As used herein, a body panel refers to, for example, any body panel, a plastic interior trimpiece, a body piece, or any suitable part or an interior trimpiece made out of any suitable material, such as wood, steel, aluminum, magnesium, carbon fiber, rubber, cloth or any suitable material. Additionally, the panel may be any suitable exterior body panel, such as a fender, bumper, quarter panel or door panel. The chassis of the vehicle may include any substrate, plate, body panel, structural framework, chassis component or subcomponent, wall or any suitable object.
However, with the advent of airbags placed throughout the interior of a vehicle, body panels and interior trimpieces may become ballistic and not detach necessarily in a safe, controlled manner. One problem is to safely facilitate deployment of these various airbags while minimizing the risk of body panels injuring passengers. For example, side curtain airbags or airbags that traverse down a window, seat, roof or along one chassis pillar to another chassis pillar typically travel from a storage position within the body panel along a predetermined path, in order to fully deploy the airbag and to protect occupants during a crash. Other types of airbags, such as “sausage-type” airbags and side curtain airbags, may operate in a similar fashion to protect the head as well as the chest region. As a result, these various body panels must safely disengage or detach from the vehicle chassis in a controlled manner in order to permit the airbag to, for example, deploy from within the body panel. Additionally, these body panels typically detach to permit the airbag to travel along the vehicle chassis via a rigid plastic strap or tether in a guided fashion, as is known in the art. Tether straps not integrated with the body panel fastener are known to be used to attach the body panel or interior trimpiece to the vehicle chassis in order to control the displacement of the interior trimpiece when detached.
However, when the interior trimpiece is fastened to the chassis during vehicle assembly, manual insertion of the interior trimpiece to the vehicle chassis requires attaching a separate tether strap between the interior trimpiece and the vehicle chassis in a separate step. As a result, a two-step process for attaching the body panel to the chassis is required, including the additional step of attaching the tether strap within the confines of the body panel and the vehicle chassis. These non-integrated, separate tether straps increase assembly costs, and therefore increase production costs, leading to higher vehicle prices because of the increased amount of labor involved when installing the tether straps between the interior trimpiece and the vehicle chassis. Further, the requirement for the separate installation of a tether strap between the interior trimpiece and the vehicle chassis further increases the likelihood of an inadvertent failure to properly attach the tether strap between the interior trimpiece and the vehicle chassis during assembly. If the non-integrated, separate tether strap is not properly installed, the interior trimpiece may detach in an uncontrolled manner and possibly come in contact with the vehicle passengers.